Aces High Read online

  What makes it all the more remarkable that commanders had not foreseen these developments is the fact that the pioneers of aviation had done so. And this they had not done in the seclusion of crackpot attempts at flight, but in the full glare of publicity attendant on the enormously popular pre-war air shows at Hendon, Brooklands, Rheims and the like. Here were prophetic competitions in air attack, as bags of flour, simulating bombs, were dropped on the outline of a dreadnought battleship laid out on the airfield. In addition to this, machine-guns were taken into the air in attempts to arrest the attention of the military – in Britain Major H.R.M.Brooke-Popham was censured by his commanding officer for endangering his Blémachine-gunriot by attempting to get a machine-gun on it; in the United States, Colonel Isaac Newton had experimented with his famous air-cooled machine-gun in a Wright biplane, but had been so discouraged by the authorities’ lukewarm reception of the idea that he had left his native land and started up his own manufacturing concern for the gun in Belgium in 1913. In France, the more far-sighted army had let the aircraft manufacturer Raymond Saulnier borrow a machine-gun to experiment with an interrupter gear to allow a stream of bullets to pass through the disc swept by the propeller without hitting the blades; and in Germany Franz Scheider of the LVG concern was conducting experiments along the same lines. In both of the last two cases, the authorities lost interest after a few early reverses.

  No matter what more imagination might have revealed, the air forces of 1914 were geared almost exclusively to reconnaissance. The largest air force was that of Germany, which had 246 aircraft and seven Zeppelin airships, with a total air crew of 525. This comprised the Imperial German Military Aviation Section. (It is worth noting at this point that the Imperial German Navy Air Service had thirty-six aircraft and two Zeppelins.) With considerable forethought, the German High Command had instituted a sizeable expansion programme, but this was geared to too great an extent to lighter-than-air craft. These appealed to the military partly for patriotic reasons, as Germany led the world in the development of this kind of machine; partly as a sop to the enormous enthusiasm engendered in the German people for the type as a result of Graf von Zeppelin’s early tribulations and later success with lighter-than-air craft; but mostly to the Zeppelin-type’s enormous potential as a strategic reconnaissance craft, with very large range and considerable ceiling. This ignored the basic failing of the airship, however: extreme vulnerability because of its very nature – an elongated balloon filled with highly inflammable hydrogen gas.

  The most common heavier-than-air type in service with the German Air Force was the Taube (dove), a shoulder-winged monoplane of Austrian invention made in large numbers by several German manufacturers. These comprised about half the 246 aircraft owned by the German Air Force, the rest being made up mostly of biplanes of the LVG, Aviatik and Albatros types. These aircraft were formed into forty-one Fliegerabteilungen or flight sections, the basic German unit for aircraft. Each Abteilung had a nominal strength of six machines, and of the forty-one sections, thirty-four were Feldfliegerabteilungen (Flabt) or field flight sections, assigned to the operational control of army and corps commanders, while seven were Festungs-fliegerabteilungen or fortress flight sections, assigned to the protection of the seven major German fortress towns along her borders. These last had a strength of four aircraft. Control of equipment and personnel was exercised by the Inspektion der Fliegertruppen (Idflieg) or Inspectorate of Flying Troops under Major Wilhelm Siegert. The growth of the importance of the air force was reflected by the establishment, on 11 March 1915, of the office of the Chef des Feldflieg, whose first occupier was Major Hermann Thomsen.

  The French Air Force, or Aviation Militaire, had a strength of 160 aircraft and fifteen airships at the beginning of the war. The airships were mostly of the Lebaudy type and the aeroplanes of Blériot, Voisin, Morane-Saulnier, Farman and Deperdussin types. The basic organization was into escadrilles or squadrons of six aircraft each in two-seater units and four aircraft in single-seater units. Command was exercised by the Directorate of Aeronautics at GQG, the French Army High Command. Head of the Inspectorate was Commandant Barès, later succeeded by Commandant du Peuty. One of the handicaps suffered by the French Air Force derived, perversely, from France’s preeminent position as producer of most of Europe’s aircraft. There were thus so many types in service that maintenance was a very severe problem. Luckily for Britain, this strength in manufacturing capability enabled France to sell many machines to her ally at a time when Britain’s own aircraft industry was still trying to gear itself to the production needs of a long war.

  It is worth noting two major differences in design theory between the French and the Germans, derived from the basic power units available in each country. The French had been the inventors of the best pre-war type of engine, the rotary, and in the two forms of the Gnome and the Le Rhône it powered the majority of France’s best early machines. Its advantage lay in an excellent power-to-weight ratio, and its light weight was combined with compactness. However, its development potential was not as good as that of the type favoured by the Germans, the water-cooled inline. This type was at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the rotary in the first two years of the war, but with a few exceptions proved to be the better power plant in the long run as it was capable of greater development. Derived from this, German aircraft design, for the most part, concentrated on well-streamlined, strong, heavy and fast machines, whereas the French favoured light, agile machines with a good rate of climb. It must be pointed out, however, that the best French fighter of the war was an inline-engined type, the Spad XIII, and that some of Germany’s most important fighters, notably the Fokker E I, Fokker Dr I and Fokker D VIII, were rotary-engined, often with Gnomes or Le Rhônes salvaged from crashed French machines.

  Military flying in Great Britain was in the hands of two bodies at the beginning of the war. The force that travelled to France with the British Expeditionary Force was part of the Royal Flying Corps, an army formation. Left behind to guard Britain’s shores was the Royal Navy’s air force, the Royal Naval Air Service.

  The basic RFC unit was the squadron of three flights of four aeroplanes each, higher units being the wing and the brigade. RNAS basic units were flights, squadrons and wings. At the beginning of the war Britain could call on 113 aeroplanes and six airships; of these, sixty-three flew to France with the BEF in August 1914. The main types were the BE 2 series, Avro 504s, Farmans of various marks and several Blériot XIs. The whole force was under the command of Major-General Sir David Henderson who was succeeded on 19 August 1915 by Hugh Trenchard, then a Lieutenant-Colonel.

  These then were the air forces available to the fighting powers in the western theatre in 1914. The Germans had a numerically strong air force, with an enormous potential. The French were numerically weaker, but had a better long-term manufacturing capability. The British were in the worst position. Their manufacturing capabilities were in the short term poor, and many machines had to be imported from France. Apart from that, machines were in short supply and to a great extent outdated (as were many German types) and the force was starved of funds. In operational doctrines, France led the field, recognizing the three distinct needs of reconnaissance, artillery co-operation and bombing long before the British and Germans.

  French superiority was made abundantly clear when aircraft moved into action in 1914, for it was French machines that scored all the ‘firsts’ in strategic reconnaissance, properly organized bombing and air fighting. The first occurred on 3 September, when French airmen spotted the increasing gap between the German First and Second Armies approaching the Marne, which led to the Allied victory that halted the German advance. (British airmen had achieved a notable coup, however, in the field of tactical reconnaissance, spotting the German outflanking movement during the Battle of Mons on 22 August, and also the French withdrawal.) The second occurred on 14 August when French Voisins attacked the Zeppelin sheds at Metz; and the third occurred on 5 October, when a mechanic named Loui
s Quénault, in a Voisin piloted by Joseph Frantz, shot down a German Aviatik two-seater with the Hotchkiss machine-gun mounted in the nose of his pusher type. The first example of bombs being dropped was by a German Taube over Paris on 13 August, but the missiles in this instance were only for propaganda. The first successful instance of artillery co-operation, however, was by the British, during the Battle of the Aisne in mid-September.

  As can be seen from the above, the aeroplane had quickly proved its worth in war. The French immediately set about organizing a strategic bomber force equipped with Voisins, and all three nations realized fully the need for a fighting aircraft which could prevent enemy machines coming across to observe behind one’s own lines, and also protect one’s own machines when on reconnaissance flights. The first attempts to produce such a machine had been made as ‘private enterprise’ inventions within the ranks of the squadrons’ more enterprising pilots, but later these gave way to properly designed fighters, though initially the absence of adequate interrupter or synchronizer gears was an almost insuperable handicap. The early efforts utilized whatever any particular pilot or observer could lay his hands on – pistols, rifles, shotguns, grenades (suspended below the aircraft and intended to detonate on contact with one’s opponent’s machine) and even machine-guns – if they could be obtained – on home-made mountings. The trouble with the first four, even had they been practical, was that there was no adequate way of aiming; and with the last that there was no way of firing directly ahead of the aircraft. Moreover, the weight of the gun made it probable that the enemy machine would escape before the pursuer got into range, if it ever did so. Another problem was that posed by the design of the aircraft. Most two-seaters were tractor biplanes, with the observer’s cockpit forward of the pilot’s, compassed about by the wings, wires, propeller and other impediments to both the handling and the firing of the gun. The only other sort of two-seater, the pusher, gave the observer a much better view from the front of the nacelle, and also gave him an unimpaired forward field of fire, but performance was so hampered by the design, however, that the enemy had an excellent chance of escaping before his pursuer came in range.

  It has been claimed, with some justification, that the world’s first fighter was a British machine answering to the above description, the Vickers FB 5 ‘Gunbus’, the first of which arrived in France on 5 February 1915. It was also this type that formed the equipment of the first fighter squadron to be supplied uniformly with the same type, No. 11, which arrived for service in France on 25 July 1915. Previously, as the squadrons had all been intended as reconnaissance units, they had been equipped with a miscellany of general purpose types, squadrons receiving twelve examples of a single type wherever supplies permitted. But with the advent of fighting machines, it was deemed advisable to attach to each squadron one or two ‘Scouts’, single-seaters whose function it was to protect as best they could their more cumbersome two-seater brethren. The day of air forces made up of entirely homogeneous squadrons, though, was still a long time off. For the time being, the British and French had to make do with the protection afforded by their Morane-Saulnier Ns, Nieuport 10s, Bristol Scouts and Sopwith Tabloids. At about the same time, Spring 1915, the Germans were introducing a new class of aeroplane, the ‘C’ class, which was to remain in service for the rest of the war. The requirement for this class was for an armed two-seater biplane of more than 150 h.p., to fulfil the general purpose role. This class eventually included good machines such as the Albatros C I, DFW C V, Rumpler C IV and Halberstadt C V. Moreover, the Germans displayed considerable forethought and decided to build four classes of fighting machine. These classes were to fulfil the tasks of bombing, aerial fighting, ground support, and reconnaissance and artillery spotting. In this they were far in advance of any Allied planning.

  However, more momentous changes were in the offing. The first true single-seat fighter, the Fokker E I, was about to emerge, and with it the ‘Fokker Scourge’.

  Chapter One

  Airmen

  Flying alone! Nothing gives such a sense of mastery over mechanism, mastery indeed over space, time, and life itself, as this.

  A hundred miles, north, south, east, west. Thirty thousand square miles of unbroken cloud-plains! No traveller in the desert, no pioneer to the Poles had ever seen such an expanse of sand or snow. Only the lonely threshers of the sky, hidden from the earth, had gazed on it. Only we who went up into the high places under the shadow of wings!

  Cecil Lewis

  The romantic isolation of the airmen was something real and exalting. They were separate and above the verminous squalor of the trenches, the prolonged ordeal which they touched occasionally when flying low over the lines, or when being brought back from a forced landing at the front. Hearsay and rumour magnified the horrors of perpetual siege warfare, living underground, the butchery of the ‘Pushes’, the reek of ether and gangrene in the hospitals. There were very few cases of officers opting for a transfer back to their regiments once they had served in the RFC.

  But for this very reason the Flying Corps was totally neglected by the High Command in terms of amenity and recreation. The ‘indiscipline’ of the flyers was a source of continual irritation to the Staff – the more so since squadron commanders tended (it seemed) to connive at it. In tacit recognition of the freemasonry that grows between aviators, it was thought preferable that the senior officer responsible should be someone who did not fly and as a result many interesting technical innovations, particularly in the field of gunnery, which the pilots attempted to introduce from their own experience, were forbidden as being against regulations.

  Those forward airfields were bleak, lonely places – cinder runways cut through acres of beet and kale. Fire-fighting and medical services were minimal and the returning injured or those who suffered from accidents at landing or take-off would have to endure a ride in a Crossley tender to the nearest field hospital, often as much as thirty minutes distant. At night the ground shuddered from gun-fire and the eastern sky flickered

  white and violet. Leave schedules were arbitrary and those lucky enough to survive in combat could be kept in station for months at a time. Of recreation there was little variety – only the forced jollity and maudlin aftermath of the ‘binge’ which would begin at dusk and continue often until those taking part were insensible.

  Uniformity of clothing deteriorated. Regimental tunics, RFC ‘maternity jackets’, sweaters, silk scarves, woolly scarves, leather flying coats buttoned up or falling loose, sheepskin boots, knee-length flying boots of fleece-lined leather with suede tops, slacks and shoes, or breeches and puttees – all these were worn on operations or about the mess to the fury of inspecting ‘brass’.

  There was very little entertainment in the evenings. No radio or ‘shows’; only what music the squadron itself could make or extract from clockwork gramophones that had to be cranked by hand between each 78 r.p.m. disc. Musical taste varied from one unit to another, setting its own conditions. Some preferred hits from the London shows whose tunes evoked glimpses of home and leave; others sang the bawdy or tragic ballads of the RFC’s own songs; whilst a few established a tradition of ‘classical only’. It was expected of every squadron member who went on leave that he should return with at least one gramophone record for the mess.

  Squadrons had no padre, no church parades. They flew every single day that weather permitted, and lost count of weeks and weekends. Drunkenness varied from one unit to another, and with the fortunes of battle. During a bad run aircrew on dawn patrol would sometimes not go to bed at all or only for a short period of stupor, with ill effect on their flying ability (although pilots soon discovered that a hangover could be temporarily cured by ascending over 8,000 feet).

  It was in these early months of 1915 that the first generation of aces emerged. The term and title really belongs to 1917, the year of the circuses and the great mass dog fights that would break down into individual contests of skill, judgment and bravery. But in 1915, when men like Ma
jor Lanoe G. Hawker, Lieutenant Max Immelmann and Oswald Boelcke made their mark, the machine itself was still suspect; its fickleness was still the first enemy.

  Gunnery – whether from the ground or from hostile aircraft – was occasional and erratic. Combat tactics were nebulous and experimental. It was the frailty of the airframe and the unreliability of the engine that were the prime restraints on a pilot’s enterprise. Manœuvres which, in theory, the pilots could work out for themselves as being ideal for evasion, were nevertheless avoided for fear of stripping the fabric, or tearing out the stay wires at their roots. Few men who sheared their wing struts or lost a rudder lived to tell the tale; practical experience in the true sense of the term was unobtainable, and rumour of a particular aeroplane’s strange failings and weaknesses would spread quickly through the squadrons and deter all but the most intrepid from putting it to the test. It could happen that an aeroplane which was seen to break up in the sky had already been weakened by enemy bullets. No one could know for certain. It was only in the heat of combat when a few brave men discarded prudence that these things could be put to the test.